Adaptation in Musical Theatre

Short introductory books on significant theories, concepts, forms, and elements of musical theatre.
Adaptation in Musical Theatre positions musical theatre as part of a broader cultural trend of recycling, referencing, remixing, and alluding to existing creative works and texts. Despite critics often dismissing stage adaptations as lazy and safe bet options for producers, this book argues that crafting an adaptation enables creative teams to take fresh and imaginative approaches to a source text, given the multitude of ways in which the structures and styles of two (or more) different media can be combined.
From Les Misérables to Wicked, by way of Legally Blonde and Fun Home, this lively book addresses several modern musicals, each adapted from a different type of source - including fiction, film, and graphic novels - and each offering a different approach to adapting existing work.
Published in Methuen Drama's Topics in Musical Theatre series, this book offers students a concise and readable study of a key and ever-evolving forms within musical theatre studies using relevant and contemporary case studies.

Adam Rush is Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Musical Theatre at the University of Winchester, UK. He is co-author of Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative (2022) with Millie Taylor. His research explores intertextuality, adaptation, digital media, and fan culture in contemporary musical theatre. This work has been published in Studies in Musical Theatre and in several edited collections. Adam completed his Ph.D. at the University of Lincoln in 2017 and holds a Masters in Theatre and Performance from Queen Mary, University of London.